While your small business certainly needs a business plan, that plan is useless without some concrete steps to make it happen. You must develop milestones -- measurable achievements that will tell you whether your business is progressing in the way you planned for it to. Develop these milestones by examining the peak points in your business plan that you must reach before you can pursue the rest of the plan.

Step 1

Identify crucial business-plan goals. Your business plan lays out the direction of your company in general terms, but within those general guidelines, you should find goals and objectives you can turn into milestones. For example, if your plan says you will achieve 20 percent growth for the first five years of your business, you can translate that into a measurable milestone: “In the first year, sales will grow by 20 percent, to be measured on the first day of our 13th month. This figure will include gross sales, not income after expenses.”

Step 2

Set start and end dates. Each milestone must have a start and end date. This gives a milestone the feel of a concrete project. For example, if your business plan indicates an expansion for your second year of business, you could create this milestone: “In the first three months of our second fiscal year, we will secure additional financing in the amount of $100,000 to be used for launching our second line of products.” Note that this milestone leads to another milestone. For example, you could write, “We will launch our second product by the fourth month of our second year.”

Step 3

Assign a budget. Each milestone requires specific amounts of money so that you can move toward your objective. Milestones without funding are simply wishful thinking. Set a budget for each milestone so that managers understand what resources they have to reach the milestone. For example, if you want to achieve the milestone of $1 million in sales, assign a budget to your sales department for extra staff and advertising.

Step 4

Designate who is responsible for the milestone. Assign a manager, department head or specialist for each milestone. This will give you a go-to person to check in with as you approach the deadline for reaching the milestone. For example, if your milestone is the production of 1,000 units per day by March 31st of your current year, in February you can meet with your production manager and ask for production figures that indicate growth toward your target production rate.

Step 5

Review the success of your milestone program. As end dates pass, note which milestones were missed and determine why. This information can help you adjust your methods. For example, if your June deadline passes and you haven’t increased sales by 20 percent, examine whether you provided enough funding to your sales department. Don’t ignore successful milestones. If you meet your productivity quota, note what you did right and commit yourself to repeating those actions for other milestones.

Tip

List all your milestones before implementing any of them. This allows you to identify conflicts. For example, if you set a date for a milestone to increase sales before you increase production, reaching your sales milestone could cause late deliveries as you try to catch up in production.

References

About the Author

Kevin Johnston writes for Ameriprise Financial, the Rutgers University MBA Program and Evan Carmichael. He has written about business, marketing, finance, sales and investing for publications such as "The New York Daily News," "Business Age" and "Nation's Business." He is an instructional designer with credits for companies such as ADP, Standard and Poor's and Bank of America.